Halo 3 breaks Box Office Records

Never in the history of Microsoft that they had generated this much excitement over a release of a product (well, maybe the launch of Windows 95 was comparable).

Still the launching of Halo 3 for the XBox 360 breaks all previous records the Redmond-based company had.

It’s been reported that Microsoft earned $170 Million in sales for the first 24 hours for Halo 3, apparently the biggest day in US entertainment history. The Xbox 360 title beat previous records set by blockbuster theatrical releases like “Spider-man 3” and novels such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

More than 1.7 million copies of “Halo 3” were preordered in the United States before a single store opened its doors at midnight, Sept. 25, making this the fasting pre-selling game in history, surpassing the previous record-setting pre-sales of “Halo 2.” Well beyond just a U.S. phenomenon, the launch of “Halo 3” was a worldwide celebration that released in 37 countries and available in 17 languages.

Ars Technica points to stats that there were 1,216,715 unique players in the last 24 hours after the launch which caused XBox Live to slow down and become unresponsive for some time.

There are also stories of office workers filing sick leaves and vacation leaves to coincide with the Halo 3 launch date. With more than 1.2 million copies of the game sold on the first day, this cultural event has even dwarfed the recent iPhone launch.